Quite a long time ago, during the break I took to establish my residency and pay only in-state tuition, I took a job working midnight shift in the hospital. I was happy there for a while, and when that changed I started applying for other jobs within the university, finally getting one as a computer programmer on days.

I was overjoyed with that job, and frequently thought that I'd be digging my claws in as "they" dragged me away from my desk at 74.5 years of age or whenever I would need to stop working.

Then came a really bad reorg... and out of curiosity, and as a means to give myself something to keep looking forward to each day, on 12/31/1997 or perhaps 1/1/1998 I calculated the number of calendar days before I would be eligible for retirement. I was amused to note that the number was exactly 5,000.

For years, I manually updated a file every day, but more recently a friend wrote me a script I could run as part of my login to my e-mail that would tell me how many days and hours remained.

Thank you and no worries. I didn't commemorate it in any actual way. (Although I did get a surprise phone call from the one who wrote the script.) Perhaps next week on the way home we can celebrate both of our accomplishments.